


Kill me with your smile

by CeruleanHeart



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Needs Love, Boys Kissing, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Fluff and Angst, Gift Giving, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of Masturbation, Pining, Poetry, Secret Crush, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Steve Harrington Needs Love, but they're both idiots, so this is a teenage angst fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-05-03 17:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeruleanHeart/pseuds/CeruleanHeart
Summary: Steve thinks he's got a secret admirer who leaves gifts in his school locker.Billy's tells himself he doesn't have a bad conscience. But what he definitely does have is an addiction for a certain pretty boy's smile.Based on thispostfrom my tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the slightly reworked and improved version of a fic I started on tumblr. Originally a stand alone drabble for a request by an anon this whole thing kinda gained it's own momentum. So here we are!

Steve would be lying if he said he wasn’t freaked out a little when he found the first gifts in his locker.

It started with a mix tape that had all his favorite songs on it and a few new ones, he didn’t know before but loved right after hearing them for the first time. 

One morning it was simply there, a Sony cassette without a case, no additional comment. Only the word “Steve” was written in black marker on the A side of the tape. Finding it confused the hell out of him and Steve spend a few moments just looking around to figure out if someone was pulling a prank on him. But no one seemed to take particular notice and when he asked around if anyone had seen who’d been messing with his locker, nobody knew anything.

It wasn’t the first time someone had put something in his locker. To be honest, that was a pretty classic move to get a person’s attention. Hell, he’d pulled the same thing with Nancy before, but usually people left some sort of message. So he half expected a recorded confession from a girl but to his surprise, there was nothing but music on the tape. Hardly any love songs. Instead, simply good music, great even. It was probably the best mixtape Steve had ever owned. 

After that, other things appeared. One day it was a sheet with the answers for a test he’d been stressing about for weeks and another, when the first warm days of spring arrived in Hawkins, a Dairy Queen coupon for 2 medium dipped cones.

Those were the useful little gifts and as much as Steve appreciated them they weren’t the ones he liked best.

Because most of the he time he found poems on yellowed pages that had obviously been ripped from library books, their paper thick but soft with age and often gilt-edged. Some of them were even sonnets Nancy educated him, when he finally caved in with the urge to tell someone about the whole thing and showed them to her. All of the poems were lovely but always a little bit sad as well. Steve collected the loose pages and kept them in a shoebox under his bed.

He found flowers too, wild ones, the kind that Steve had never really noticed before, but placed carefully on top of his messy pile of books they were arranged in exquisite little bouquets that filled his locker with a floral scent. When he took them home and put them on his night desk, they made his room look a little bit brighter.

Steve got used to the little surprises faster than he thought he would and loved them more than he knew he should, because it meant that someone picked his locker almost every morning. Still, he came to school each day with a sense of anticipation and felt his heart warm and his cheeks glow every time he found something.

And in the evening, when Steve was home alone in the dark empty house, with only the shadows and his nightmares for company he found the idea that someone thought of him in such deliberate ways the only thing to ease his loneliness.

The truth was, nobody had cared about Steve like that in while. And hardly anyone had ever tried to make him happy without asking for something in return. This was nice for a change, it made him feel a bit less like bullshit.

It killed him a little too, that he didn’t know who send him all those gifts and that they had never made an attempt to approach him. But the first time he’d started poking around trying find his secret admirer, they had stopped for over a week and Steve was too afraid to destroy the fragile bond he had with the stranger to keep looking for them.

For a while, he simply accepted things the way they were.

Then, one morning after he opened the creaking metal door and found a single panicle of white, star shaped flowers he noticed a ball of crumpled paper on the ground in front of his locker.  
Steve hesitated to pick it up but after a minute of debating he listened to the persistent litte voice in his head and did so.

It was another poem, he realized after unfolding it but this time it hadn’t been taken from a book. This time it was handwritten in neat, slanted letters.  


Steve’s heart was beating so hard, it made his hands tremble when he read the few lines.

“I look at you and you’re the moon  
So fair and cold and high above me in the sky.  
I want to shoot you down and own you  
But without you up there I wouldn’t make it through the night.”

There was something about this clumsy little attempt at poetry that resonated with Steve’s soul, with his loneliness and heart break and made it profoundly beautiful to him. A lump formed in his throat as he realized that he hadn’t been meant to read it, that whoever had written it had crumpled it and clearly intended to throw it away.

That afternoon Steve left a message in his locker for the first time.

It said:

_Please talk to me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaw! Lonley baby Steve needs a serious hug! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you liked it so far! And if you did why not consider leaving a comment or a kudos? ;)
> 
> Also for fic updates, short fics, previews/teasers and other stuff I post nowhere else you can visit me on [tumblr](https://highon85.tumblr.com). I take asks and prompts and don't bite in general. ^^


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Billy's POV for this chapter.

Billy had a bad addiction. And no, it wasn’t smoking, he could stop with the cigarettes at any given time. He just didn’t want to, thankyouverymuch.

What Billy was addicted to was Steve Harrington’s smile. How that had happened… yeah, it had been kind of an accident.

The thing was, Billy wasn’t one for apologies.

So if Max found a new skateboard in her room one day, who said it was Billy who put it there. He had no idea who slashed the tires of that kid who called Lucas the n-word either. And if there were little things appearing in Harrington’s locker, Billy had nothing to do with that.

Because he wasn’t sorry. Fuck you.

So anyways, with that established CLEARLY the fact that those gifts kept showing up in the preppy boy’s locker posed a problem. It was just… Billy couldn’t stop.  


Originally he’d meant for it to be a one-time thing. Absolutely not an apology just, you know, some kind of gesture or some sappy shit like that. So he wrecked his brain for a few days. Because fuckdammit what do you give to someone who already has everything?

That’s where Tommy, a well of Harrington gossip that never dried up, came in. It only cost Billy a can of beer to get him to run his mouth about his former friend.

The downside was, it turned out to be a long evening of anecdotes and shit talk. Billy was fully ready to sucker punch the other boy in the mug to finally make him shut up, when Tommy started making fun of how Steve kept listening to the same records he had since junior high. Well, that was a start.

Billy spend a weekend in front of his stereo taping songs from the radio until he had the perfect balance of what he knew Steve liked and what he thought he would. He was quite satisfied with the result, it was a pretty good mixtape considering it didn’t have a single Metallica song on it.

The average lock on a high school locker isn’t a very precise little mechanism. All you need to brute force the combination is some basic math and a bit of patience. It’s really not that hard. Billy invested 12 extra minutes after basketball practice and then dropped his gift off. Easy as pie.

The next day he silently watched Harrington’s confusion when he found it from the other side of the hall. And to be honest, the idea that this loser would never be able to figure out who’d put it there filled him with some kind of mischievous joy.

But then something happened. Something Billy wasn’t prepared for.

Steve liked the tape. He liked it enough to keep it in his car and Billy could hear him play it every morning when he pulled into the school parking lot, bobbing his head to the rhythm.  
Steve liked the fucking tape so much, he smiled like an idiot when he listened to it. And he kept on smiling when he got out of the car, he even walked with a little bounce in his step when passing Billy on his way to the school’s entrance.

It made him happy. The goddamn tape made Harrington happy.

And that did something to Billy. Something that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside, something that made him not want to run someone over with his Camaro for a change. And god, yes he knew it was stupid and almost disgustingly sentimental but… he kinda liked it.

Billy Hargrove suddenly found himself thinking of ways to make Steve Harrington smile. Pretty fucking ridiculous.

But nobody had to know, right? Not even Steve.

So when he accidentally nicked the answer sheet for the year above him instead of the one he wanted from Mr. Guttenburg’s briefcase, he let Steve have it. The look of relieve washing over the boy’s face when he found it was enough to make Billy feel good about himself for an entire week.

He’d heard that Harrington was a sucker for ice cream so he slipped him that coupon he wasn’t going to use anyway as well.

It wasn’t a big deal, considering how long the cuts and bruises he’d left on Steve’s face had taken to heal. Except, those weren’t the only things he gave to him.  
Really, the poems and the flowers were what made Billy question his own sanity.

But they were also what made Steve smile the most, made him blush so prettily. They were what made him fucking glow from the inside.  
Never before in his entire life had a person reacted that way to something Billy had done for them. Not even when he had tried.

And it had been so easy, almost casual. Just a stray thought about Steve when he was brooding over a poem for English homework, just an early blue bell growing in the front yard of his house. Both things had found their way into Harrington’s locker almost on their own. After that, he’d just kept going.

He had it bad. Billy had it real fucking bad. He knew that when he was standing in front of Steve’s locker again, sweating like a pig, his hands shaking.  
It was hard to believe it had come down to this. That he was about to place a poem he himself had written during a sleepless night next to some flowers he had picked for that occasion. Like some love-struck fool.

The problem was that the poem sucked. Tremendously.

So what if Billy had spent hours leafing through poetry collections and vandalizing public property at the library? That didn’t make him a poet, obviously. What on earth was he thinking?  
  
Suddenly he felt angry at himself and with a satisfying crunch he crumpled the piece of paper in his fist. He rolled it into a tight little ball and stuffed it into the pocket of his denim jacket. Then he slammed the locker door shut and walked away. The flowers would do the trick just fine.

It wasn’t until the next day, when he found Steve’s note, that it dawned on him. Slowly he reached into his pocket, only to feel the big hole in the lining he had intended to mend for weeks now.  
  
Steve had found his poem, those stupid little lines that made him look like an idiot. Even worse, he wanted to talk to him.

For a moment he imagined the light going out in Steve’s eyes, the look of disappointment and very likely disgust when he found out it was Billy who send him the gifts.  
  
He couldn’t let that happen. He wanted Steve to keep on smiling, he needed him to keep on smiling. That was what got him through his worst days.

Because you know it, Billy had a bad addiction.

He flipped the note over and scrawled something on the backside.

_I’m sorry, I can’t do that._

So in the end, he had apologized for something. But that was ok, wasn’t it? As long as no one knew and Steve kept on smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secretly self-conscious Billy is my new thing. Aaah, the teenage angst! Boy needs a hug too.
> 
> The next chapters will be alternating/shared POV. 
> 
> As always feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand with this chapter we’ve arrived in the present. Alternating POVs for the boys and a bit of a style change to a more introspective narrative.
> 
> Also a slight warning for: Teenage angst, emotional chaos and idiots in love being especially idiotic.

Much to his own surprise it turns out Steve has found a little obsession as well.

It’s the poem. And everything around it, really.

Ever since he’s picked it up from the ground in front of his locker, he’s got a hard time thinking about anything else. During the roughly twelve hours he’s owned it he must have read it at least a hundred times. By now, when he closes his eyes it’s the first thing that appears, almost a photographic memory.

Steve knows it sounds a little bit stupid, even in his own head but in a way it feels like this is the closest he’s gotten to his secret admirer during all this time. He’s so strangely intrigued by this single piece of paper, as if might be the key to reveal all their secrets.

Steve feels a bit like a chick with a crush when he plops down onto his bed, and spends the larger part of the evening tracing the letters on the crumpled paper with his fingers. He studies them with fascination. On closer inspection they’re a tiny bit odd, large and pointed, slanting to the right, the spacing between the words narrow. The text seems like it was written fast and with confidence but with a lot of pen pressure as well, like each letter had to be tamed and wrestled onto the paper by sheer willpower. Steve wonders what that says about the writer.

It’s maddening how close yet at the same time far away the author of the poem seems and how they can make Steve feel so much with so very few lines. If he had a way with words, like his secret admirer, then maybe he could name this warm feeling in his chest, this bittersweet yearning he has felt all day.

 _Whoever you are, just talk to me._ Steve thinks, pressing the crumpled paper with the poem to his chest like that could help his wish come true. _Please, please, please._

____

Billy’s still a bit shaken from finding Steve’s note and he can’t help but feel like he’s handled the situation poorly, like he’s acted in a rush of panic.

He didn’t leave anything in Steve’s locker except for the hastily scribbled reply, still has the poem of the day tucked away in his front pocket. Which is dangerous. One of the reasons, he never forgets to drop off the gifts for Steve is so he can’t be caught with them. If word got out that Billy Hargrove walks around carrying flowers and poems with him, he’d be fucked. He’s so damn careful, alternating between placing the things after and before school, which is easy enough to pull off since Max started to bike to school with her friends every day.

 

But now he needs to get rid of the evidence, the risk is too big and he does so by ripping the page to shreds and flushing them down the toilet. It’s a bit of a shame, the poem he had for today was a nice one, to make up for the shitty one he had written but… oh, well.

Billy returns from the bathroom just in time to run into Steve in front of his opened locker – and freezes.  Harrington’s got his note in his hand and stares at it blankly, his doe eyes wide and empty, his face ashen like all blood has left it. He doesn’t seem to register Billy or any of the other students passing by and simply stands there, incredibly still. For a moment there’s this wild thought in Billy’s head that if he touched Steve now, he might break into a thousand pieces.

He only realizes that he’s staring when the Wheeler girl passes by and gives him a weird look, so he takes off to his first class before anyone else can get suspicious.

But he can’t get Steve’s face out of his head, it haunts him for the rest of the day. He’s seen that look on people before and he’s been the cause of it too many times to not know its ugly name. Heartbreak.

 _That went well…_ he thinks bitterly.

____

It’s not like Steve is gonna cry just because he found the reply in his locker. He’s not a baby, he can handle rejection. Thanks to Nancy, he’s got plenty of experience with that.

It’s just that he didn’t expect it, doesn’t understand it, that’s why he’s so utterly shocked and then hurt and then angry. Because what the fuck is their deal? Why do they invest so much time and thought in Steve, only to push him away when he tries to make contact? Don’t they like him? Don’t they care that he maybe might like them too?

He’s not gonna cry but he sure feels like it, this shit is so fucking frustrating.

For three days Steve’s locker remains untouched. So on top of feeling sad and pathetic Steve starts to wonder if he’s scared his secret admirer away for good. Maybe it’s better that way, maybe with a little time he can go back to the way he was before, when his happiness didn’t depend on a stranger’s little gifts. With time, the ache in his chest might just go away and become a distant and fond memory of his last year in high school when someone did nice things for him.

On day four the flowers return. But it’s different somehow, all they do to Steve is make the pain in his heart swell. He takes them home but he buries them in the backyard because he can’t bear to look at them. When the poems pick up again, he can’t even read them, they make him too sad.

At some point Steve just wants it to stop. He doesn’t want to feel all these confusing things because of someone he’ll never meet. He can’t be that hung up on them. All he wants is to carry on with his own bullshit.

By the end of the week he does cry, like a little bitch and he hates himself for every minute of it.

____

Billy’s fucked up big time. He’s a real pro at that, isn’t he?

Harrington looks fucking devastated and the worst thing is, he doesn’t know how to fix that. That’s really not Billy’s field of expertise, fixing things. Or explaining things. Or handling very sad pretty boys. There is absolutely no doubt that he’s in way over his head. What a mess.

Billy watches Steve mope for a few days until he decides maybe they can simply start over again. He steals a bunch off marguerites from the neighbour’s garden. They’re happy flowers, his mom used to say, maybe they’ll make Steve happy too.

I turns out, they don’t. And neither do the poems. Instead of lighting up Steve grows sadder and sadder with every gift. It doesn’t matter how hard Billy tries, nothing gets him to smile again.

And in return Billy gets angrier and angrier mostly at himself because instead of preserving Steve’s smile, he’s managed to kill it. The only thing that means something to him in this godforsaken shithole that is Hawkins.

He wants to kick himself but instead resorts to kicking others. It earns him a split brow and a nosebleed but at least he manages to get rid of some of his pent up aggression.

But it doesn’t get him anywhere with Steve, of course. Billy’s truly at a loss. Because it’s not like they’re friends, they don’t even talk outside basketball practice anymore. He’s stayed clear of Harrington as much as possible since that night at the Byer’s house and even clearer since he’s started… that whole thing.

He doesn’t know what to do. So what he does is act like a fucking grade schooler and toss a ball straight into Steve’s face during next practice.

When he goes down with a grunt Billy jogs to his side, holding out a hand to help him up, like a good teammate. And let’s be honest, he’d do it even if he didn’t have that flimsy excuse simply because that’s the only way he’ll get to touch Harrington nowadays.

“You were spacing out.” He says and because that sounds too much like an apology and Billy really isn’t so great at improvising he adds “What’s wrong, princess? Your period late?”

Oh, Billy is a real pro.

Steve bats his hand away with a loud smack.

“You’re what’s wrong with me.” He hisses and for a second, Billy is stunned by the crazy notion that Steve knows, that he’s figured out it’s Billy who sends him the gifts. It’s nonsense of course but he’s caught so off guard, he doesn’t even have the time to come up with a pithy comeback before Harrington stomps off the court.

_____________

Steve didn’t have the best two weeks of his life, ok? Graduation is looming on the horizon and he’s awfully distracted. It starts showing in the pop quizzes he fails. Steve swears if he has to go through summer school to get his diploma, he’s gonna die.

To make things worse he’s got Hargrove on his back again. The guy seems to be in an even fouler mood than usual and apparently he’s picking up his old hobby of bothering Steve. He’s staring him down in the hallway, gives him rotten looks during lunch, teases and taunts him during practice, mocking his performance and to top it off he almost breaks his nose again. What the fuck is Hargrove’s problem with his face?

Steve is down, rubbing his nose and his mouth where the ball hit him, the taste of cheap rubber is strong on his lips.

Billy, the mean bastard offers him a hand but Steve knows better than to take it, he’s not falling for the same trick twice.

In a perfect world where Hargrove would be a halfway decent person, he’d take the hint and simply apologize but of course Steve doesn’t live in that world.

“You were spacing out.” The asshole sneers like it’s his own fault he got hit and he adds “What’s wrong, princess? Your period late?” as if Steve needs a reminder that he’s the biggest dickhead on the planet.

“You’re what’s wrong with me.” He spits and half hopes Billy will pick up the challenge and start a fight. How he’d love to land a good punch on Hargrove’s mug, consequences be damned.

But the other boy just looks at him, dumbfounded and speechless; nothing like the Billy Steve is used to. And isn’t that frustrating, even Hargrove is letting him down. Steve storms off the court 10 minutes before practice ends and ignores the shouts of his teammates and the coach. If he gets benched for that, what does it even matter?

The next day there are no poems and no flowers in his locker, instead he finds an actual letter, with envelope and all.

_Dear Steve,_

_I’m sorry if I said something wrong. I never meant to upset you._

_Please don’t be sad, your smile is everything to me._

_\- B._

The message is short but that doesn’t matter because it’s also everything and more than Steve ever wanted. He stands there and grins like an idiot. Another part of him can’t believe he’s swayed so easily but that part is drowned quickly in the warm, syrupy sweet feeling of joy spreading in Steve’s heart.

He knows he should spend the evening studying but instead he borrows some stationary from his dad’s desk and writes a reply.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Young love, so confusing! *sighs*  
> Ok that was both fun and surprisingly challenging to write. I hope y’all liked it, thanks for reading! Sorry for the delay, I hope I can get the next chapter out faster. As always do let me know what you think. I live for your comments. ;)
> 
> Or if you prefer swing by my [tumblr](https://highon85.tumblr.com) to chat with me or check out some more writing, occasional art and general 80s stuff.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to  Good Morning Hawkins (quodpersortem)  
> Who betaed the first part of this chapter for me and without whom it would only be half as long! Thank you so much, dear!!
> 
> I almost killed myself trying to fit everything into the last chapter before I realized that the story simply needed more room to unfold fully. So there will be one more chapter after this to wrap things up. Now, without further ado, please enjoy some more teenage pining and mildly emo poetry.

Billy can’t remember the last time anyone wrote him a letter, a real one, not a postcard or few hastily scribbled lines on a notepad, one that starts with “Dear…” and ends with “… sincerely yours” or something. He thinks probably never.

He remembers his mom wrote one to his dad the night before she left, remembers Neil worked the late shift that day and he was allowed to sleep on his side of his parents’ bed, remembers falling asleep to the glow of the small lamp on his mom’s vanity and the scratching of her pen on the paper. She didn’t write Billy a letter, most likely because he was too small to know how to read but she kissed his forehead and told him she loved her “little boy”. And that was the last time he saw her. Sometimes Billy can still feel the tingling of that kiss above his left brow, can feel the sting of betrayal.

Growing up Billy learned that most letters are bad news anyway, especially after Neil got laid off from his job and the mailbox started filling with overdue bills. Those letters sucked. They made their lives harder and his childhood bleaker than it had to be. As he got older there was plenty of mail for or about Billy too, most of it letters from school even a suspension or two for fighting. But again, those weren’t actual letters.

At least they weren’t letters in the same sense at all as the one that’s waiting for Billy in Steve’s locker on a rainy Wednesday morning. It starts with “Dear B.” and yeah, Billy is pretty sure that is the first proper letter he ever got, the letter he didn’t even know he was waiting for all his life.

And what a letter it is; three pages of beautiful ecru paper sheets embellished with a classy, engraved design. There’s something endearing about how in contrast to the formal stationary Steve’s chicken scratches are barely legible, the spelling is terrible and the text is a bit jumbled, very much like Harrington sat down and simply put the first things that came to his mind to paper in no particular order. It’s not an artful letter like in some kind of sappy Jane Austen novel but it’s clearly a very enthusiastic one because boy, does Steve have a lot to say to Billy. There are more words written on the paper than they’ve exchanged in person during the entire time they’ve known each other. It’s fucking impressive, that’s what it is.

It’s also incredibly sweet.         

Billy locks himself in one of the stalls of the boys’ room and reads it three times in a row. He misses first period, but seriously, who fucking cares. Billy doesn’t hear the things Steve says in his letter a lot, so sue him if he wants to enjoy them in private for a while.

The things Steve says… Jesus, he says things like how Billy’s gifts make him happy, how he looks forward to them every morning, how much he loved the poem he wrote for him. He tells him that he’d been so sad because he thought Billy didn’t want to talk to him and that he’d thought he’d never get a chance to thank him for all the things he did for Steve. There are a lot of other things Steve writes, like what his favorite song from the mixtape is or how he saved his ass with that answer sheet, he also tells him that they covered one of the poems Billy gave him in English class the other day and how impressed the teacher was with Steve when he already knew it. But Billy’s favorite part, the one that he re-reads at least a million times, is the one where Steve says what a special person Billy has become to him and how he thinks of him all the time.

His heart kinda explodes at that. Billy isn’t a special person to anyone, he’s the wayward son to his so-called family and a pretty great fuck to a number of other people but he isn’t SPECIAL to anyone. Except to Steve apparently, who thinks of him all the time. Holy shit. Are those simple palpitations or is Billy actually dying right now?

Of course, Steve doesn’t know he wrote the letter to Billy. It’s not really for him or about him. But it doesn’t matter because Billy is in love. There’s no point in denying it. He’s in fucking LOVE, ok? He has been for a while so he’ll take what he can get and this, this is great. This is more than he’s ever had because Steve sounds like he’s in love too. He doesn’t explicitly say so but come on, he wrote three pages about how awesome Billy is. Ok, maybe Steve is only in love with an idea but who’s nit-picking?

Billy wants to keep this, just for a little while. He kinda worked hard for it, he made this happen somehow. He wants to feel loved by Steve Harrington just a little longer. Maybe, maybe he can drag this out until summer comes. Until the inevitable end when Steve graduates and goes away to college or something, until Billy is stuck again with nothing in fucking Hawkins.

He actually goes ahead and buys some proper stationary for his reply; it’s maybe not as fancy as what Steve uses but it feels more legit than stealing Susan’s envelopes and writing on the same notepad he uses for his homework.

Ok so maybe this is turning into some kind of Jane Austen novel bullshit after all, but who said romance was dead? Whoever it was, they can go suck Billy’s dick.

_____________

Nancy used to say that Steve wears his heart on his sleeve. He considers that a flaw now, but back then he naturally assumed that this was a good thing, something she liked about him because she said it with a smile. She made him feel like it was ok to show her his softer side, to open up about the person he was underneath his playboy façade. He didn’t have to pretend so much. Nancy wasn’t like the other girls, Nancy loved him the way he was

Until she didn’t. Until she took the heart from his sleeve, cut it open, and hung it upside down to drain. She’d called their relationship bullshit, said that Steve himself was bullshit and then she took off with Byers the next day. Well, fuck, if wasn’t that a blow to his self-confidence.

For a while, Steve was convinced he wouldn’t get it back. The confidence that is. And honestly, why bother? His crown as the ruler of Hawkins High was broken anyway. And his kingdom? Conquered by Billy Hargrove and rotten.

But really, there had been bigger problems back then, so between the breakup and the horrors from the Upside Down, Steve didn’t even find the time and energy to hold a grudge against Nancy or fight for his throne. In the end, Steve’s feelings had become an unnamed casualty.

Steve has another flaw, which is that he never learns from past mistakes. And here he is still wearing his heart on his sleeve. He can’t help it, he’s a fool like that. So when he starts the letter to B. the words just come tumbling out almost faster than he can write them down. He wants to tell them everything, every little thing he’s felt or thought about them, every little thing they mean to him. This might be the only chance he gets, so he can’t leave anything out, he’s gotta make it count. It’s like a rush, he’s almost delirious with it and when he’s done he realizes his heart is no longer on his sleeve, it’s on the paper and it’s beating within every word.

It was B. who brought it back from the dead, along with his confidence.

When Steve puts the letter on top of his books and closes his locker door on Tuesday after school, he thinks he can feel a soft pulse flutter inside the envelope. He’s scared for a moment to leave it there for a virtual stranger to find, but then he remembers how many pieces of B.’s heart he’s been given and kept safe and decides to trust them to do the same.

When the letter his gone on Wednesday he still almost loses his mind. There’s a smiley face badge waiting for him where he usually finds flowers and poems, and he’s not sure what to do with that. It’s a good thing, isn’t it? He sure wants it to be. After some debating, he pins it to his school bag and hopes B. will see it there.

Now that he’s got an initial to hold on to, his thoughts are revolving around nothing else but who might be hiding behind it. He’s long past the point where he suspected some kind of elaborate prank, everything about this feels way too sincere and heartfelt.

 

He can count the girls whose names he knows start with a B on one hand. There’s Betty, of course, a cute sophomore with freckles he’s seen hanging around one of his teammates from basketball, then there’s Bea who’s in Steve’s year but is basically married to that guy named Chad. He thinks he remembers there’s a Beverly but he’s not all too sure about that, could be Brittaney or something. The other girl is Becky of course but let’s just say they aren’t on best terms after that fling they had two years ago ended kind of ugly. It’s probably not her.

Maybe the B stands for her last name? Steve has no idea. Whoever it is, she’s great at hiding. She must be literally poker facing it, every time Steve walks by because he really can’t say he’s gotten a lot of female attention lately, not even a stray smile once in a while. Getting dumped for the school creep is kind of a stigma, he wonders if the girls suspect his dick might not be working right or something. The only person at school who openly gives a fuck about Steve nowadays seems to be Hargrove, the jerk. But that’s of course not the kind of attention anyone would want. Steve’s nose still hurts from last practice.

At least Billy seems to be in a much better mood today so maybe he’ll leave him alone. The asshole is grinning like the cat that ate the canary and Steve would call that dumb if the smile didn’t look so good on Hargrove’s stupidly handsome face. He can basically hear the panties dropping to the left and right when he sees Billy walking down the hall. Ugh.

Hargrove gives him a lewd little wink and does that thing with his tongue when he catches him staring, and Steve becomes abruptly aware of the fact that Billy also, definitely starts with a B. He’s also really invested in Steve, in a bully sort of way. Huh.

 

Steve’s eyes follow the sway of Hargrove’s hips in those sinfully tight pants as he ambles past him and he immediately discards the thought. Not that it’s entirely impossible that his B. turns out to be a boy but alpha macho Billy Hargrove? Absurd. Plus, he’s such a dick that it’s more likely that the fucking Janitor turns out to be his secret admirer. That man has about a million times more kindness in his heart than Hargrove and that says a lot because Steve once saw him trip a student with the end of his broomstick. But his name is Jim, so.  

Steve should be thinking about other things anyway, he’s supposed to graduate soon. That's something he oughta remember more often.

However, despite his good resolution, Steve almost can’t sleep that night from all the anticipation building up in his stomach. He tells himself to stay calm and rational about this, not to expect a reply and not to be disappointed if he doesn’t get one this time. But who is he trying fool? He’s lovesick like a twelve-year-old girl who’s obsessed with the guys from Wham!.

_______

 

Billy learns that night that writing letters is a dying art for a reason. It’s really fucking hard. Especially if you can’t give away your identity.

Or maybe he’s just thinking too much about it. But he also wants to impress Steve. This is so dumb. Oh god, what is he doing? He doesn’t really know how to talk to Harrington. That’s the whole problem here.

It’s kind of frustrating because Billy is smooth as fuck and real damn charming. He knows he is. He uses that a lot to get what he wants or who he wants and he always gets it, he hardly ever has to work for it. A smile, a wink, a casual touch… the Hawkins High cows are basically drooling over him. That’s a fact he isn’t being vain or anything.

But with Harrington, his brain short-circuits every damn time and whenever he opens his mouth to say something only trash comes out. It’s probably because Billy knows Steve is out of his league, way out of his league, actually. The fact that Steve is a boy only plays a minor role here because even if Steve were a girl and Billy would like pussy as much as he pretends he does, he’d still be so high above him on the social ladder and so painfully uninterested, Billy might as well try to hit on Princess Diana.

Harrington straight up ignores him unless Billy gets real physical, like fist in the face physical. It’s been like that from the start and no amount of staring and shoving and taunting had gotten him any sort of reaction worth mentioning. When it comes to Steve, Billy might as well not exist. And that just leaves him hurt and empty. He thought for the longest time that taking what was Steve’s, his friends, his title, his dignity would fill that void but he doesn’t want to be like Steve. He wants to have Steve, he wants to touch him and smell him and taste him and he wants Steve to want him too but… it’s much too late for that. At least one dinner plate too late.

Exquisite pain, Billy gets it now it’s the sweetest kind of torture having Steve’s heart so close now, almost within reach, but not being able to tell him who he is. Communicating through gifts had been safe and easy but he doesn’t trust his own words anymore not for his own good and not for Steve’s.

He starts over and over again with his reply, fills page upon page and throws them all away until there’s only a single one left from his newly bought stationary and Neil is banging on his bedroom door because the light is on past ten.

He crawls into bed then and stares at the ceiling. When he thinks about Steve here in the dark, alone under his sheets, every thought has the hazy, burning quality of a fever dream. And when he touches himself to the image of Steve’s soft pink lips, the pale curve of his neck, the pattern of moles on his shoulders, the swell of his firm ass and the dark dust of hair traveling from below his navel to his groin, his name falls from Billy’s open mouth like a prayer.

It’s 3:23 am when Billy picks up his pen again, writes in the dim glow of the flashlight he keeps underneath his bed and bleeds his soul onto the paper.

 

____________

 

Steve doesn't know what he expected when he finds another envelope neatly addressed with his name, but what he gets are two things rolled into one. A confession and a riddle. B. wrote him another poem and very much like the first one it’s beautiful and sad and a little bit dark.

 

_If you were my king_  
_I'd make you a crown of barbed wire  
_ _Just so I could soothe away the pain_

 

_If you were my king_  
_I'd be your servant and your squire  
_ _But your heart is what I'd want to reign_

 

_If you were my king_  
_I'd wield my sword upon your desire  
_ _To claim a kiss for every man I've slain_

 

_But alas, my king!_  
_I am the dragon and I am the fire  
_ _And my love for you shall ever be in vain_

 

Wow, ok Steve is not even going to pretend he doesn’t fucking love that someone writes poems for him and about him. Jesus, that’s some next level courting right here, he can feel the blood rushing to his face while reading.

That last stanza, though. It pains Steve that B. thinks that way because reading the word “love” alone means everything to him. There's something else about it too, that drives him crazy. It's that feeling that the answer to who B. might be is right in front of his eyes, somewhere between the lines. Steve is just too dumb to see it. The dragon and the fire. What the fuck does that mean?

Is this even the first hint, he's missing? Or should he have figured out who's been sending him the gifts long ago? All he knows is that someone loves him. According to the poem, it’s someone fierce and loyal and wild. Someone devoted and romantic, who still thinks of Steve as a king. Someone whose name starts with a B. That should really narrow down things but Steve has literally no idea who it could be.

Maybe if he'd at some point condescended to actually getting to know the other people at school instead of bathing in their admiration and surrounding himself with such an exclusive selection of shitty friends, yeah maybe then he'd already know who B. is. Well, shit.

Steve carefully puts the poem back into the envelope and slips it between the pages of a book so it doesn't get creased accidentally. He lets his gaze wander carefully up and down the hall bustling with students right before first period. He recognizes most faces, knows a lot of names but apart from Tommy, Carol and Nancy they're all basically strangers to him. Steve becomes very suddenly and very painfully aware that he doesn't have any real friends here. Not a single one. Ouch.

No wonder he's been hanging out with middle schoolers for the last half of a year. He wants to find B. more than ever now, they need each other and they belong together.

He ponders over how to reply to the poem for the rest of the school day. Steve may not have a knack for writing poetry himself but he’s pretty proud of what he comes up with. It’s way better than simply saying “Hey, I like you too. Wanna go with me?”.

When Steve leaves school that day a small note in his best handwriting is waiting for his secret admirer.

 

_If you were my dragon_  
_I'd want to burn in your fire  
_ _And our love would never be in vain_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, haha that was almost stupidly romantic! Next chapter is finally going to be the big reveal, promised!
> 
> Thanks for reading and sorry for the long wait. Let me know how you liked this chapter, I live for your comments! ^3^~


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all my apologies! I wanted to post the giant chunk that is the last chapter of this fic as one but due to the large amount of fic being backed up on ao3 as a result of the ongoing tumblr apocalypse, I changed my plans.
> 
> I know this sounds selfish and I hope you can forgive me but this is the first real multi-chapter fic I’ve finished and I hope this way, a few more people will find it despite the increased influx of other great fic this week.
> 
> Thanks for understanding, I hope you enjoy this chapter in which the pining finally escalates.

Billy always liked to think that there are not a lot of things that can shock him. But one look into Harrington’s locker the next morning doesn’t only interrupt his gifting routine, it also proves him astoundingly wrong.  

Steve’s note is just so fucking dauntless and cheeky, it leaves him speechless for a while. He stands there gaping like an idiot. Thank God it’s so early, no one is around to see him, otherwise he’s pretty sure that pathetic display would really put a stain on his reputation at this school. Funnily enough though, Billy shouldn’t be surprised, not when Steve has shown some real guts before. And he’s not gonna lie, he likes that about Harrington but  _ this _  is getting his hopes up way too high.

Billy wishes he could believe Steve. He’s never wanted to believe someone so bad, never wanted to trust someone’s words that much.

What the note promises is too good to be true. It’s a mere fantasy, thinking they could be together, an item, a couple… lovers. Billy being able to touch Steve, and kiss him and hold him and wake up next to him between rumpled sheets and watch him blink his eyes open in the gentle morning light.

Billy, who never wanted anything like this from someone before.  Billy, who thought he’d be fine living a life without love if only there was enough sex and booze. Billy, who knows now that he’s lost forever, lost to a doe-eyed boy with a soft smile and perfect hair. He dreams of this. He dreams of being fearless and brave, the way Steve is, facing things head on even if the chances of winning are astronomically bad.

But he can’t. Because apart from being brave Steve is just as dense as he’s pretty, which means very.

There’s no way Billy would’ve gotten that kind of reply if Steve had figured out what he’d been trying to tell him with his poems. Harrington obviously still has no idea who he is and that dark, cynical part of Billy’s heart that can’t stop mocking him for his dumb infatuation with the local preppy rich boy whispers to him that Steve probably expects some cute junior girl to be his secret admirer.

The taste of bile is bitter in Billy’s throat as he feels a sudden wave of irritation and jealousy wash over him. He can’t go on like this. There has to be something, anything he can do to make Steve  _ understand _  without actually outing himself and turning his life into a nightmare.

Billy’s opts for an orderly retreat to give himself time to rearrange his thoughts but that means he’s miserable for the rest of the school day. He keeps stealing glances at Steve, trying to figure out what is going on in his head when he smiles to himself so softly. He tortures himself picturing what the imaginary person Steve has fallen in love with looks like in his head. Is it a girl? Most likely. Does she at least resemble Billy a bit, bold with blonde curls and blue eyes? Or does she look like Nancy, delicate and dark haired, a pretty little doll?  Would Billy even be Steve’s type?

It’s ridiculous. How did he end up like this? The more he thinks about it the more Billy’s fists start itching, the way they do when he wants to punch something, get some blood on his knuckles. If he could he’d rip his own heart out and leave it in Steve’s locker. That should be a  _ dead _  fucking giveaway and also finally relieve him of his suffering. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

But instead, after school is out and everyone has left, he does something almost as impulsive and reckless.

Billy has no time to second guess his actions if he doesn’t want to get caught locker-picking by the janitor again so he hurries off as soon as he’s done. He’s got the whole afternoon and a sleepless night to regret it.

___

  
Steve is so nervous on his way to school the next morning, he’s got to wipe his palms on his jeans a couple of times because they’re so sweaty that they keep slipping off the steering wheel.

Something is gonna happen. He knows it, can feel it in the air. A small part of Steve hopes that instead of a gift, B. will be there this time, waiting for him in front of his locker. They’ve confessed their feelings to each other, Steve is so ready for the next step.

But when he walks down the hall and sees nobody is there for him, his heart sinks. Only the usual suspects are around. Like Nance and Jonathan, holding hands and whispering to each other a few rows down. God, they’re so cute together it makes Steve sick.

He kind of wants go home again right away, almost regrets coming in the first place but when he opens his locker, something shiny and silver catches his eye. He picks up the object, hands shaking.

Turns out it’s a classic chrome Zippo, very much like the one he lost in the tunnels of the Upside Down, when they set them on fire. The only difference is that this one has been customized. There’s a design engraved on the bottom case. Steve tips the lighter to get a better look at it and realizes it’s a scorpion, facing him with his pincers open and his sting up in the air. It’s pretty well made even though the lines aren’t perfectly clean. It looks hand engraved, made maybe with the tip of a knife or a nail and a lot of patience.

The lighter isn’t new. In fact, it looks heavily used, there are small scratches all over the surface and a dent on one side of the lid that looks like it has been dropped one time too many. This, Steve realizes, is more than a gift. It’s a personal item, the kind that has a story with its owner. It’s a part of B.

Also, this is NOT the lighter of a girl.

IF there was a girl at Hawkins High who’d have a lighter like that, Steve would know about her. The entire fucking town would know about her. But a girl like that doesn’t exist here so there’s absolutely no doubt that this is the lighter of a guy.

And suddenly things click into place. The nature of his gifts, the careful distance his admirer is keeping, his insisting that they cannot be together. Everything makes sense now. For a few moments Steve just stands there, staring at the Zippo in his palm, stunned by this realization. His heart is thundering in his ears.

B, his B, his secret admirer is a boy!

Steve is starting to sweat again. He understands why B. gave him the lighter. He really had it coming, didn’t he? He asked for fire and now he got it. Steve said he would burn and now he has to prove that he will.

He’s got two choices. Either he keeps the lighter and accepts that B. is a guy or he puts it back and ends this once and for all. Is that what he wants, though? Does B. really become someone else just because he’s got a dick? Isn’t he still the same person Steve has been pining for all these weeks?

Steve's so deep in thought, the sudden ring of the bell makes him jump. Hastily he slips the lighter into the pocket of his jeans without even thinking about it. It’s pure reflex born of the need to keep something precious safe. The lighter rests heavy and meaningful in Steve’s pocket.

He takes a calming breath. Steve is going to see this through, he’s not gonna chicken out. But he gets that he has to be careful from now on, otherwise he’ll expose a secret that could hurt them both.

Casting nervous glances down the hall, he starts getting his books out. All around him students are rushing to their classes, minding their own business. For a second Steve feels relieved that no one seems to have noticed his little almost-crisis. But then the crowd thins and Steve catches Billy Hargrove staring at him from where he stands by his locker, a few feet down diagonally across from Steve’s.

Billy’s blue eyes trained on him are oddly calm, like he’s in deep contemplation. But there’s an intensity to his gaze that makes Steve’s skin prickle.

“What are you looking at, Hargrove?” he scoffs, uneasy and a bit embarrassed.

Billy stares at him for a few seconds longer, slowly wets his lips like he’s about to explain himself to Steve. But when he speaks he only shakes his head with a wry smile.

“Nothing.” He says, turns away to close his locker and walks off to class.

Steve watches him go. One day he’ll figure out what Billy’s deal with him is. But today is not that day.

 

\-----------------------

 

Billy almost doesn’t make it through Trig. He’s fucking vibrating in his chair. Sometimes he wonders if his head is broken in some way. It can’t be normal to like someone that much but also want to punch them in the face so goddamn bad.

Judging by the face he made earlier Steve must’ve finally gotten at least half the message. But his reaction when he caught Billy looking only proves what he’s suspected all this time. Steve still doesn’t know. As a matter of fact he doesn’t even see him as a person. He doesn’t see him at all. To Harrington he’s a nobody, even worse, some kind of untouchable pariah.

The pencil in his hand snaps with a loud crack. Behind him Tina starts giggling and the teacher turns around from where he was writing on the blackboard.

“Mr. Hargrove instead of destroying your writing utensils, how about you solve this problem for us?” he says. That condescending asshole loves finding reasons to single Billy out and try to embarrass him in front of the class. Too bad for him tough, Billy's fucking acing Trig.

But it still pisses him off and he breaks the stick of chalk several times until he's got to write with a crumbling little stump. At least he gets to break  _ something _  and chalks are better than for instance the teachers jaw, even though that idea becomes more appealing with every passing second.

But Billy can't get suspended for fighting, not again. So he swallows it down and solves the fucking problem.

By the time the class is dismissed Billy is ravenous for a cigarette, he needs the kick of nicotine or else he's gonna snap.

He hunts down Tommy while switching classrooms.

“Hill! Lemme borrow your lighter.”

Tommy the shit head makes a face like he can't stand being parted with one of the shitty plastic lighters he usually carries around with him for even a second.

“What happened to yours?” he asks reluctantly while fumbling with his pockets.

“Lost it.”

“Gee, that's a shame man. It was pretty cool.”

“Whatever.” Billy snatches the lighter from Tommy's hand as soon as he produces it and storms out.

“I'll need that back!!” Tommy shouts after him and Billy flips him off.

It's a good thing second period world history is a propaganda shitshow anyway because it takes killing three cigarettes before Billy starts calming down. He's been trying real hard to keep it together ever since he woke up at the Byers house hungover from some sort of tranquilizer and with patchy memories of what happened that night. All confused and scared, mostly of himself and what he'd let himself become.

His attempts to make amends with the kids and Steve weren't the result of a change of heart, in fact they were an act of selfishness, a means to an end to prove to himself that he hadn't turned into his father yet.

Maybe this, maybe falling in love with Steve is the punishment he deserves.

Billy wants to cry, he wants to scream, he wants to smash something. If necessary himself, if that’s what it takes to get over this.

 

_________

 

As usual Steve has no idea what pissed off Hargrove this time to make him show up for practice all crazed up and foaming at the mouth, the guy’s mood swings are the worst he’s ever seen.

Billy stomps into the locker room with his face twisted in something that looks like constipated rage, snaps and sneers at the others while changing. Almost knocks Kyle over on his way out.

But once they’re on the court he’s changed again, like the tide. Being a ball hogging asshole is his standard mode for practice and Steve has more or less become used to his jibes and Billy’s permanent quest to one-up him in every game, but today he’s just _  intense. _  More focused, faster, meaner somehow even though he completely ignores Steve, keeps his eyes on the ball and the net, keeps his distance, avoids physical contact while cold anger seeps from his pores.

He’s also incredibly silent.

Normally Steve tries to tune out his noise and Hargrove himself along with it, but it’s scary how much harder it is to ignore him this way, to close his eyes to how fucking good Billy is. How graceful and effortless he moves when he steals the ball, the way his muscles work under smooth skin when he dribbles and jumps to score. He makes it look simple and easy but at the same time like art.

Steve finds himself staring, caught between envy and admiration. It kinda pisses him off, his day has been weird enough and there are other things he should be thinking about than Hargrove.

He’s glad when practice is over and Billy is the first to finish with his shower. By the time Steve has toweled himself dry and is getting dressed he’s already on his way out, not even bothering to say goodbye or wait when Tommy calls after him.

Steve throws his jeans on the bench to get to the socks buried underneath them in the locker and doesn’t even notice the small object tumbling from his pocket until Tommy picks it up with with a frown.

Steve’s heart jumps in his chest.

“Hey!” he snaps “Give that back!”

Tommy gives him a weird look.

“It fell from your pocket. Why do you have Billy’s lighter?” he asks, perplexed, turning the Zippo over.

“What?” Steve is about to grab it from Tommy’s hand but his motion and his brain freeze midway.

“He said he lost it and had to borrow mine, earlier.”

A cold, dead weight settles in Steve’s stomach as he watches his former best friend study the lighter like a rare coin.

“How do you know it’s Hargrove’s?” Steve tries to keep his voice calm, even though he can feel a storm building in his head.

“The Scorpions.” the other boy shrugs and shows Steve the engraved design “That's their logo. They are like, his favorite band in the world.”

Tommy sounds like it’s obvious, like Steve is an idiot for not instantly knowing who the lighter belongs to. Maybe he is.

“I found it in the parking lot this morning.” Steve lies and feels panic rising in his throat, making it tight, threatening him to choke on what he’s just learned.

It can’t be true. This is a joke. It must be a joke! It… _  Oh. Alright. _  Steve sees how things are. Suddenly, the panic ebbs away and is replaced with anger, flickering to live and eating through his body like a forest fire.

“Man, if he knows you have that, he’s gonna kick your ass.” Tommy laughs, oblivious of what is going on “You want me to give it back to him for you? I’ll say I found it. Friendly gesture on my part. For old time’s sake.”

“You know what.” Steve smiles all cool on the outside but burning, fuming on the inside “I think I’m good. I think I’ll return it right now. If I hurry up can probably still catch him in the parking lot.”  

He snatches the lighter from a dumbfounded Tommy and puts his jeans and shoes on with the speed of light. He grabs his shirt on the way out and pulls it on, wasting not a single thought on what that does to his hair and then he’s running. Down the hall, and across the parking lot where Billy’s about to get into his Camaro, already ducking, flicking away a cigarette butt.

“HEY!” Steve shouts, jogging across the parking lot, and watches with satisfaction as Billy startles and turns around.

Billy opens his mouth to say something when Steve has reached him, panting and feeling absolutely murderous, but he cuts him off by holding up the lighter accusingly.

"Is that yours?" he asks his voice calm but sharp enough to cut bone.

Billy's eyes flicker to the small silver object and then back to Steve's face. He turns around fully and then plants his feet one boot at a time.

"Yeah. That's mine." there’s a strain to his voice, a hint of insecurity, like he’s caught off guard by being found out.

"Are you the one who put that in my locker? Along with the the other things?"

"What if I did?"

"Is... Is this some kind of prank? Some kind of private joke?" Steve seethes.

Billy's face crumples the way it does when he's about to snap, Steve knows far too well how that looks. It twists his handsome face into a mask of ill contained rage. But he doesn't move doesn't say a word.

"Is this a joke?" Steve repeats louder this time.

Billy stays silent and solid like a monolith, but Steve… Steve breaks.

"IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF A JOKE, YOU SICK FUCK?!" he yells, voice cracking with that burn in his throat that comes before tears.

And right on cue Billy starts laughing raw and unhinged, his head tipping back, sucking in sobbing breaths in between cackles. Steve watches him, feels hatred bubble in his veins but is unable to move, he’s clutching the lighter so tight the knuckles on his fist go white. He wants to crush it. Billy’s finally coming down from his laughing fit and wipes tears from his eyes when he finally looks at Steve again.

"Yeah and it was funny as hell too." he grins "You should've seen yourself! Oooh I'm so special somebody likes me. You're pathetic, Harrington."

Steve lunges, doesn't even think about if first, just throws his entire body forward and tackles Billy. Their bodies connect with the hood of the Camaro in a dull thump. Billy lets out a surprised “oomph!” but recovers quickly and grabs Steve’s wrist when he tries to get a punch in. They only wrestle for a second, then Billy manages to overpower him and flip them, shoving Steve against the side of the car parked next to his. Pinned down like that some of his blind rage fizzles out  and he manages to speak again

“What have I ever done to you?!” Steve hisses, his nails digging into the denim of Billy’s sleeves as he struggles and tries to free himself from his grip. “Why would you do something messed up like that?”

Steve’s vision is filling with tears, he wants to kill Billy, wants to get the bat from his trunk and bash his head in with it. He wants revenge, revenge for his murdered heart. But he can feel the pain and the grief about his betrayal settling in, making him weak and shaky, helpless and hopeless.

“I just want to know what the fuck is wrong with you, Hargrove!” he sobs, fat tears running down his cheeks as he blinks.

Billy holds him like a vice, his eyes are hard, all cold blue steel drilling into Steve’s. For a moment he thinks Hargrove is gonna hit him but then, after what feels like a small eternity he dips his head and leans in.

First, Steve isn’t even sure if this counts as a kiss. It’s a forceful press of mouth on mouth, so hard he can feel the line of teeth behind Hargrove’s closed lips. But then, just a second before Billy pulls away his lips soften on Steve’s and they linger there like the softest caress, warm and sweet. They turn Steve’s heart into a fragile thing made of glass that threatens to shatter with the moment.

When Billy breaks the kiss he’s meeting Steve’s eyes with a defying frown, blinking rapidly, his chin trembling.

“Now you know.” he says and his voice is thick and raspy, his eyes now wet as well.

He pushes Steve back against the car with a small thud and gets up, spins around. Billy doesn’t utter another word, instead leaves Steve behind with his knees so week he’s sliding down the passengers door and onto the ground.

He watches Billy leave, watches the Camaro rip out of the parking lot with screeching tires, unable to move and stunned into silence.

_ I am the dragon _ , Steve thinks,  _ I am the fire.  _ How could he have been so blind?

Billy’s kiss burns on his lips like the mark of a hot branding iron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry for ending this with a cliffhanger. The last part is already written and will go up next week around the same time.
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter despite all the heartache. If you did, a comment or a kudos always makes my day. Your feedback is what keeps me writing! ^^
> 
> There is also a moodboard for this fic which you can find **[HERE](https://highon85.tumblr.com/post/180906210346/kill-me-with-your-smile-steve-thinks-hes-got-a)** on my tumblr. I'm also on **[Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/highon85) ** now! :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains small parts that deal with homophobia and homophobic slurs.

AC/DC is blasting from Billy’s speakers, Bon Scott sings “ _ Asking nothing, leave me be/ _

_ Taking everything in my stride…”.  _ Billy, steps on the gas harder until the blur of the houses around him turns into the brown-grey blur of the woods.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, only knows he’s on a highway to hell too, but not in a good way like in the song. Tomorrow, without a doubt, everyone in school, everyone in fucking town will know that Billy Hargrove is a dick-loving faggot.

There’s no way Steve is gonna let him live that down, not after the hate and the disgust he saw in Harrington’s eyes. Everything turned out the way he predicted and he can’t even blame the other boy for it. Billy knows if their situations were swapped he’d reacted just the same.

He should leave now, just go, never look back, start over somewhere else. He’s only got a few months left until he turns 18, maybe he can find a job somewhere, sleep in his car. It’s wishful thinking, nothing more, he knows that. If he doesn’t slow down soon, he’ll be out of gas money by the end of the week. The Camaro is an expensive car, eating every cent he’s got, but it’s also his pride and his joy, the only thing that allows him a taste of imaginary freedom in the prison that is his life in Hawkins with Neil and his new family.

Not Billy’s family, Neils. Not Billy’s life, not Billy’s future. Never Billy, only them.

The road in front of him blurs when tears start filling his eyes. What has he done? How could he be so rash, so stupid? How could he think, how could he wish there would be a chance that Steve…

Look at him now, he’s lost the only person in his life that actually cared about him. Unknowingly so but still, that meant something. At least to Billy.

The tears don’t stop, they just keep running down his cheeks, drip from his chin and fall on his thighs like fat, warm raindrops. Billy can’t see like this, so he slams the breaks before he can wrap the car around a tree.

He stops at the roadside and just sits in his car for a while crying, ugly and loud howling his pain into the void. His chest, his whole being feels raw and open like someone has performed a y-incision on him, dug through his insides and then forgot to stitch him up again. He cries and cries until his wristwatch starts beeping with an alarm he’d set for the afternoon.

Time to take Max to Chief Hopper’s eery cabin in the woods where she has a playdate arranged with that weird silent girl. Of course Neil and Susan are too busy to take Max and they don’t want their precious little girl go biking through the forest alone.

Billy’s tempted to just stand her up, because when word comes out what he did, Neil might kill him anyway, so where’s the point. But his sense of self-preservation is so ingrained in Billy’s nature that he caves and turns the car around.

When he reaches their house Max is standing outside on their porch, already fuming because he’s a few minutes late to pick her up. She comes stomping up to the car and opens her mouth, without a doubt to form some sort of snappy remark, but when she sees Billy’s red nose and his puffy eyes she shuts it again very quickly.

“Get in, if you wanna see your creepy little friend today.” Billy snaps and watches Max frown as she climbs into the passenger seat.

“El’s not creepy, you are. What happened to your face?” she grumbles but her eyes on him are wary.

“Nothing.” Billy lies. “Just a bit of hayfever, all those trees in this shithole are killing me with their pollen.”

Max goes tense with those words, she knows just as well as Billy that he doesn’t have hayfever. The ride is silent and awkward, because the last time Max has seen him like that was after Neil had just found him in his car with another boy, a few blocks away from their home.

They hadn’t even done anything, just parked for a while after a long day at the beach spent surfing. To talk and share a cigarette and glances that maybe promised something more before they parted. It  _ could _  have been the beginning of something but Neil had always suspected that Billy was different, had some sort of sixth sense for whenever he fooled around with another boy and lied about it later. So he’d brought his gun and pressed its muzzle to the temple of Billy’s friend before telling him to fuck off and never speak to or look at his son again.

It’s an unspoken truth that Neil found them there because Max had noticed Billy’s car while prowling the neighborhood, like she used to, and tattled about seeing it parked at that corner to Susan and Neil. He knew it from the look of guilt on her face, when Neil had pulled up to their house in Billy’s car but with his son in the passenger seat, when she had seen his eyes red and puffy just like today and a new bruise beginning to form on his jaw.

They had moved soon after and while Susan and Neil insisted to call it a fresh start away from Max’s father they both knew this was only half of the truth behind their move and that hung between them like a poisoned blade, separating them more than anything else could ever have.

Billy’s tried to lay low since then, has explicitly and aggressively been dating nothing but girls, made friends only with guys that are in relationships. But the lingering resentment he feels for Max and his father’s constant suspicion have been a burden on him that’s so heavy, it makes him feel like he’s close to cracking and breaking into a million pieces under its weight all the time.

It’s still silent in the car except for the ongoing stream of music coming from the radio when Billy pulls into the gravel road that leads up to Hoppers cabin. The building is already coming up around a bend, when Max suddenly speaks.

“If this has to do with the gifts you’ve been leaving for Steve....”

Billy slams his breaks for the second time today, coming to an abrupt halt maybe a hundred feet away from the cabin.

“WHAT?” he barks, suddenly terrified.

Billy knows the only reason Max even dares to bring up this speculation is that  _ she _  knows he can’t kill her in front of the home of the chief of the police.

“Come on!” she rolls her eyes, exasperated “I’d have to be daft not to know it was you who bought the new skateboard for me and did all these other things. It’s not that hard to figure out.”

Billy licks his lips as fear keeps spreading in his heart.

“Have you told anyone?” he tries to keep his voice leveled but can hear the tremor that has sneaked into it.

“No, of course not.” Max mumbles and suddenly finds the back of her hands very interesting, there’s a blush forming on her cheeks “I just wanted to say that I think it’s nice of you to try and apologize and it’s unfair if anyone is giving you shit about it.”

Billy doesn’t know what to do with this, part of him wants to laugh at her because, look she isn’t quite as smart as she thinks she is and part of him, irrationally, wants to give her a hug. But since he can do neither of both things, he just settles for a weary sigh.

“You know what.” Billy says “It doesn’t even matter anymore. Just get the fuck out of my car, shitbird.”

 

_________

  
  
Billy's kiss seems to have etched itself into Steve’s lips and his mind permanently. The sensation of Billy’s mouth on his simply doesn't go away, he can still feel it when Tommy finds him in the parking lot and laughs at him, saying “I told you he'd kick your ass.”

He can still feel I when he walks back to the locker room and packs up his things.

He can still feel it on his drive home.

He can still feel it when he drags himself up the stairs and falls face first onto his bed.

It continues to haunt him there, the texture of Billy's lips, the shape of his mouth, the ghost of his taste. Everything else that happened between now and the kiss is lost in a haze, like his whole world has narrowed down to that one moment.

This time Billy broke him for good, it seems, just not the way Steve expected.

“Now you know.” Steve whispers into the folds of his pillow repeating Billy’s words from earlier.

But the truth is he knows nothing at all, maybe even less than before. Trying to wrap his head around the enigma that is Billy Hargrove is like trying to connect two pieces from different puzzles. Sure you can make them fit but there’s no denying they belong to unrelated pictures, the colors don’t match and the scales are out of proportion.  

Who is Billy Hargrove? Who is he? Steve’s school bully or his secret admirer? His nemesis or his crush? No, really! Who the fuck is Billy Hargrove? Steve doesn’t know anything about him except that he’s loud and obnoxious, wears his jeans one size too small and for some reason had it out for him since day one.

Who is B? Steve knows a lot more about that person. Like that he’s got great taste in music, has a talent for poetry and picks flowers, that he’s attentive and kind, romantic and devoted to Steve

B. is who Steve likes, not Billy. Somehow he feels cheated by the fact that they turned out to be the same person, lied to.

Billy’s clearly got a screw loose somewhere. After all, he tried to rearrange Steve’s face that one time and until today he was convinced that Hargrove’s fixation was the result of the guy hating his guts and not being secretly in love with him.

Because that’s what this is, if he can believe his poems. What was Billy even trying to do here? Be extra mean to him, just so Steve wouldn’t find out it was him all along, sending those gifts?

Something in his stomach twists with the pang of guilt Steve feels, when he suddenly remembers all the times he used the words queer, fairy and faggot before, to insult, to hurt to call someone inferior and weak. If Billy had told him he liked him, what would he have done? Steve’s face burns with shame as he buries it deeper in his pillow, because he knows the answer. No, he wouldn’t have given Billy a chance, not in a lifetime.

From the very beginning, he never did. Billy’s not the type of kid Steve would even consider hanging out with. Someone like Steve doesn’t mingle with someone like Billy, or someone like Jonathan for that matter. That’s not how high school works, there are rules and all the time they’ve both played by them.

No wonder Billy’s always seeking conflict, that’s the only acceptable way for them to interact in public. Those are their roles, “King Steve” and Billy the “Bad Boy” from the wrong side of the tracks, they can clash but they can’t be friends. It’s frustrating, Steve had made himself believe that he had grown out of all that hierarchie shit during the past year, when really he changed less than thought he had.

Billy seems to be much smarter than him, because he’s figured that out from the start. That’s what his poem was trying to say, that’s why he preferred to stay hidden. Yes, they’re both guys but that’s really only half the problem.

Even if his title isn’t worth shit nowadays, Steve is still a Harrington who drives the most expensive car at school, lives in Hawkins best neighbourhood in the house with the biggest pool, wears the nicest clothes. Nothing can take that away from him. His pedestal is so high, he’s up there all alone and if he tried to jump down, he’d probably break his neck.

It’s fucked up, he hates it.

Steve wonders if things weren’t the way they are, would he have come to like Billy on his own? Hargrove is charismatic and undoubtedly handsome, Steve had to be blind not to notice that. Heck, maybe he’s even beautiful with those bright blue eyes and long dark lashes, a perfect body and a golden tan. And it’s not, well, it’s not like Steve hasn’t checked out Billy a little bit under the shower. Guys do that if only, you know, to  _ compare _ . It’s no secret.

Maybe Steve stole a glance or two or twenty when his rival wasn’t looking. And Billy DOES call him “pretty boy”. So there’s that.

Steve flips to lie on his back because by now he’s close to suffocating. Billy’s kiss still burns, burns, burn with such intensity like no other kiss Steve has ever had.

He never really thought of Hargrove much until now but the truth is, he knows what Billy’s body feels like against his own, hot breath and smooth, sweaty skin and a mass of muscles that is both soft and firm, pressing close. Steve’s skin heats with the memory, it’s not a bad one, that’s for sure.

There’s always been that tension between them, he couldn’t quite understand. A prickling sensation in his stomach, when he felt Billy’s eyes on him or watched the rivulets of water stream over his broad shoulders and down along the sinewy muscles of his back, running into the crevice between the globes of his ass under the shower. That, and Steve has heard stories, about what Billy allegedly is capable of doing with that tongue… stories from girls, mind you but stories nevertheless.

Jesus fuck, now he’s starting to fantasize about the guy whose heart he might have broken today. That’s a new low, even for him and he got dumped by the girl he thought he’d marry.

But Nancy, Nancy seems so far away now like a distant memory. And Billy, he’s become so real suddenly, tangible and very much in love with Steve. Something Nancy never was.

If Steve could fall for the part of Billy that is B., could he also fall in love with the rest of him? Despite everything that happened? Because of everything that happened?

There’s only one way for Steve to find out, but only if he hasn’t fucked this up beyond repair already.

 

________

  
  


When Billy arrives at school the next day his heart is heavy with dread. He expects staring faces, pointing fingers, shouted insults and maybe even a slur scrawled across his locker, the standard repertoire of what is the high school equivalent of a torch and pitchfork crowd.

For a while last night, overcome with shame and embarrassment, Billy had considered to simply threaten Steve into silence. But where is the point in breaking his pretty face again, when all he wants is to see said face smile for him only one more time? And that will never happen, so really, there’s no point in anything at all.

He’ll deny everything of course, he’s not suicidal, but in a hick town like Hawkins he’s gotta brace himself for the worst.

Billy gets out of his car, his stomach clenching and heart thumping, and shoulders his worn out messenger bag. So far everything seems normal, he doesn’t attract more attention than usual. The other students are going about their daily routines greeting each other on the way to the door or standing around chatting in small groups before first period starts. From across the parking lot Tina is waving and smiling at him.

Maybe word just hasn’t gotten around yet, maybe Billy’s got a few hours of grace left before shit hits the fan. He can’t see Steve’s BMW anywhere in the parking lot, so that must be the reason, he simply hasn’t had the opportunity to tell anyone yet. For a moment Billy wonders if Steve is immune to begging and if not, what that would say about himself.

He shoves the thought aside and walks up to the entrance with adrenaline singing in his veins, he’s sweating more than usual but it’s a warm day so hopefully no one will notice.

Tommy slinks up next to him while he’s getting his books out.

“Hey man, took your lighter back from Steve yesterday, didn’t you?” he snickers “I warned him, alright. But you know King Steve doesn’t listen to us peasants. Glad you taught him a lesson.”

Billy’s heart almost stops at the first sentence, Tommy knows about the lighter? But as the other boy rambles on, his confusion grows. He thinks they had a fight about the fucking Zippo and Billy beat Steve up over it? What the fuck is going on?

“Whatever, man.” he shrugs acting all disinterested to cover up his bewilderment.

“Gotta remind him who’s in charge, right?” Tommy’s nudges him in the shoulder with a grin, his ass kissing is disgusting but Billy figures he should enjoy it while it lasts so he resists the urge to punch him in return “Anyways, can I have mine back now?”

“Sure, man.” Billy digs the plastic lighter from his pocket and tosses it at Tommy and then gets on his way to class “See you later.”

Billy doesn’t really give a fuck about whether he sees Tommy later or never again but he’s got to give his mouth something to say or risk biting his tongue off with all his pent-up tension. Steve is still nowhere in sight and this state of suspense is driving him crazy. What is happening and where did Tommy get that wild story about the lighter?

That reminds him that Steve never actually returned the Zippo, great now he’s gonna have to bum a light from someone else. Today is really not his day.

It does however turn out to be a completely ordinary day. The lessons trickle by as slowly as they usually do, nothing seems changed, there isn’t any new gossip going around only the same old stories that have been circulating for weeks.

Can it be that Steve kept his mouth shut? And if yes, why? Billy knows if he had the opportunity to take an enemy down like that, he wouldn’t even waste a second thought.

The answer comes to him when he switches out books again in form of a folded note, that has been slipped through one of the vents of his locker.

_ Meet me in the alley during lunch. _

_                                       - Steve _

So Harrington is alive and did show up to school, after all. And apparently he wants to settle this one on one.

Billy knows about the alley, that half hidden spot between the main building and the gym. It’s where students go to talk in private. That makes it a place for mostly three things, confessions, fights, and break-ups. Billy and Steve have nothing left to confess and no relationship to break up, that leaves one reason why he would ask him to come out there.

Not long ago Billy would have jumped at the opportunity for a face off between Harrington and him. But now all that this idea elicits from Billy is a bitter smile.

At least some of the pressure is lifted for the day, so by the time lunch comes around Billy is filled with a sense of calmness and clarity. His anger and frustration of the past few days are gone. If it ends today, he figures that will be a relief. Maybe he can forget about Steve then, they’ll both be safer for it. Some things aren’t meant to be.

He comes up with an excuse for Tommy and Carol, lest they go ahead and look for him later and then sneaks away to where he’s supposed to meet Steve.

Harrington is already waiting for him in the gloom between the two brick walls, clutching his backpack and drawing circles in the gravel with the tip of his shoe.

Billy clears his throat to get his attention.

Steve jumps at that, hastily drags a hand through his hair and gives Billy a nervous little smile.

“H… hey!” he stutters “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

“You called me and here I am.” Billy shrugs buries his hands in his pockets, they’ll stay there no matter if Steve wants to fight or not.

To his absolute surprise Harrington is smiling again and starting to blush.

“I’m glad. There’s, uh, there’s something I want to show you.”

“Show me what?”

Somehow this isn’t going quite the way Billy expected, he thought Steve was going to confront him the way he did yesterday but instead he watches the other boy fumble his backpack open with shaky hands and produce a Nike shoe box. He finally sets the backpack down and holds the box out to Billy with both hands.

“This!” Steve lifts the lid and Billy knows immediately what he’s looking at.

The shoe box is filled to the brim with ripped-out book pages, dried flowers and other small trinkets. Billy can make out a red slip of paper, the mixtape, two envelopes and his Zippo among these things. His stomach drops instantly.

He looks up at Steve again heart thumping in his ears with a beginning rush of panic. The other boy stares back at him brown eyes wide and expectant.

“You kept all of this?” Billy asks carefully, watching for a change of expression in Harrington’s face.

“Yes! Of course I did!” Steve clutches the box to his chest. “It was you who gave me all these things, right?”

Billy swallows hard, fights the urge to snatch the box full of evidence from Steve and run, burn it at the next opportunity.

“Listen Harrington.” he says instead, takes a step back from Steve “I promise, I won’t bother you anymore, I won’t even talk to you anymore or look at you if that’s what you want. Whatever it takes man. Just don’t tell anyone about it, alright? Like, I gotta let you know, I’m poor as fuck. I’m still paying off my car and shit so if you’re trying to blackmail me, I don’t have any money. But uh, I could do your homework for the rest of the year or whatever. ”

“What?! No!” Steve makes a face like Billy just said something truly outrageous ”Is that why you think I wanted you to come here?! To.. to blackmail you?!”

“Wait.” Billy is honestly perplexed now “Is that not what this is!?”

“No! Oh my god! Why would you think I’d do something like that?! Jesus.”

Billy wets his lips nervously studies Steve’s face for the trace of anger or a lie but finds neither there, only confusion that matches his own.

“Yesterday you were pretty pissed off.” he says slowly, unsure about what kind of conversation it is they’re having “And I thought you’re probably mad because I…” he end his sentence with a vague gesture.

“Because you kissed me.” Steve finishes it and the blush on his cheeks turns into a pretty scarlet. “But I’m not. I’m not mad.”

“You’re not?”

“No.” Steve shakes his head, drops his gaze to contents of the box, mumbles “I was just surprised. I’m sorry.”

There is something in Billy’s chest, something small, a glimmer of hope maybe where there was only darkness, when he asks,

“What are you sorry about?”

“For yelling at you and for thinking it was a joke. I didn’t expect it to be you but... maybe I’m just stupid.”

“You’re not! And I’m sorry too!” Billy blurts and suddenly it’s so easy, so incredibly easy to do what he wanted to do all this time, to apologize, to fess up “I’m sorry for beating you up and treating you like shit!! I didn’t mean it, sometimes I’m so angry that I lose control and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore and I know that’s not an apology but that night I…”

“Billy!” Steve interrupts him “It’s ok. I get it and I forgive you ok?”

“What, really?! Just like that?” Billy knows he sounds fucking pathetic but he can’t bring himself to care, he feels too many things at once, his head is spinning with it.

“Yeah. I mean, Jonathan beat the shit out of me once and now we’re cool. It’s all in the past.” Steve shrugs like it really is nothing.

“And you won’t tell anyone about this?” he gestures at the box, there’s skepsis in his voice, plain and clear but also that feeling of hope from before.

“No. I won’t tell anyone about your secret.” Steve smiles and closes the box, sets it down carefully only to look at Billy again with those warm, open eyes. They’ve shared glances and stares before but this is the first time Billy feels like Steve actually  _ sees _  him.

Billy is stunned by it for some reason, mumbles “Thanks”, feels stupid about it, but doesn’t know what else to say.

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise.” Steve repeats and if Billy thinks he couldn’t blush any harder, then he was wrong because the red is spreading to Steve’s neck when he continues “But I was thinking, maybe it could be our secret?”

Now it’s Billy’s turn to feel heat rising under his collar, Steve can’t be saying what he thinks he is, can he?

“What the hell are you even talking about, Harrington?” he croaks, feels shaky somehow, scared that his mind is playing tricks on him, that this is some kind of twisted set-up.

“In your letter you wrote that you love me, is… is that true?”

Billy clamps his lips shut so tight his teeth start digging into the soft flesh of their insides. He wasn’t prepared to admit that in person, like ever. But Steve looks at him with exactly the mix of fear and anticipation he feels himself.

“I tried so hard not to, you have to believe me Harrington.” he confesses “But it just happened. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Can you… can you say it?” in front of him Steve starts trembling, his lips quiver when he whispers “Can you tell me that you love me?”

“Steve…” Billy’s heart is pounding like a fist against his ribcage, he’s never been so scared in his life. No one’s ever asked him about his feelings before.

“Please, Billy!” Steve begs when he doesn’t break his silence “I need to hear it to believe it. If it’s true please say it.”

Billy closes his eyes, counts to ten, feels his ears burn and hopes his chest isn’t going to explode.

“I love you, ok?” he says finally and the words feel so liberating, he thinks he might cry “I’m sorry, but I love you.”

Suddenly, there are hands on his cheeks and Billy blinks his eyes open to see Harringtons face only an inch away from his. Steve’s breath hits him, warm and damp, when he laughs.

“Don’t apologize, asshole. We’re through with that.”

“I... ok?”

Billy watches Steve study his face, his eyes intent, searching. There’s a smile tugging in his pretty lips and it makes Billy’s hands in his pockets twitch with the urge to embrace Steve, pull him close and kiss him but he stays still, doesn’t want to break this fragile moment between them.

“You know, you made this really hard.” Steve says after a while “I was so worried I had fucked this up.”

Billy snorts.

“Fucked this up? What do you mean, Harrington?”

“I mean I’m falling for you and I’m so glad you still like me.”

“You are?” Billy’s stomach is doing a happy somersault, his heart skips a beat or two, there’s a chance Steve is actually going to kill him today.

“Yeah.” Steve lets go of Billy’s cheeks, loops his arms around his neck instead, his eyes grow dark and wanting.

“Does that mean I can kiss you again?” Billy asks, already leaning in, lost and drowning in Steve but surrendering happily.

“Fuck yes.” Steve breathes, his mouth so close they’re almost touching.”Please.”

Billy’s kind of easy, really, he’d never deny his pretty boy anything.

Steve’s lips when they finally meet Billy’s are as soft and sweet as he always knew they would be, the way he remembers it even though their first kiss was too hard and over too fast to savor them. Harrington tastes of chapstick and peppermint and that makes Billy grin a little bit into the kiss, thinking maybe Steve came prepared for this.

He gives Steve’s bottom lip a little nip and soothes it over with his tongue, asking for entrance. Steve’s breath hitches and he tenses up a bit but Billy’s hands finally leave his pockets to cup his face, to run his thumbs soothingly across Steve’s cheekbones. When he slots their mouth against each other fully again, Steve melts, opens up beautifully and welcomes Billy’s searching tongue. He moans happily and presses their bodies together, walking Billy backwards until his back hits the brick wall. Nimble fingers tangle in Billy’s curls as Steve kisses him back full of hunger and greed until they have to part for air.

Steve’s eyes stay closed for a second after they break the kiss, his lips parted like two petals of a rose. They shine with Billy’s spit  and when they curve into a sweet smile and his lashes flutter open to look at him, Steve is glowing the way Billy has learned he does when he is happy.

“Shit, I love it when you do that.” Billy whispers and brushes his nose against Steve’s.

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

Steve laughs and pinches Billy’s side, calls him a dork, and then they’re kissing again.

They spend the lunch break in the alley, making out, whispering, learning each other’s names anew until it feels like they’ve never been anything else than this. Billy knows it won’t ever be easy for them and that maybe this won’t last. But they have today and tomorrow and with a bit of luck the whole summer to figure it out. It will have to remain a secret but it’s the best secret Billy has ever had.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaw look, they’re in love! These idiots made it!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading everyone! This is the first multi-chapter fic I’ve ever finished and I’m really proud of that today!
> 
> A big shout out to everyone who left a kudos, bookmark/subscription, or a comment so far! Thanks for being part of this journey and putting up with me and my eternal losing battle with spelling and punctuation. I hope you enjoyed this last chapters and I want you to know that without your feedback and encouragement this fic would have never become more than as a small prompt fill on tumblr!
> 
> Speaking of which, there’s a moodboard for this fic you can find HEREon said tumblr and I also have a pillowfort now! Come chat with me if you want. ^^


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